Are you celebrating St. Patrick’s day in your classroom or at home this year? After the winter holidays and Valentine’s Day, it’s always nice to keep the fun going with another reason to celebrate. I like to do St. Patrick’s themed activities all week long, but the fan favorite is always our easy leprechaun traps.
Story Time
This leprechaun trap activity is based on the book, “How to Catch a Leprechaun”. It is a fun book to pull out in March leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, and the kid’s eyes are always glued to the pages as we read.
In the book, a cheeky leprechaun plays tricks on kids and visits their houses. Each child has a different trap set up to try and catch the leprechaun, but every time he is able to outsmart them and get away.
At the end of the book, the author teases that one day a brilliant child might be able to design the perfect trap to finally catch the leprechaun. But who will that child be?!
As soon as you have turned the last page, your little ones will be so eager to try their hand at their own perfect leprechaun trap! Trust me, their enthusiasm for this task is absolutely adorable.
The Set Up
First things, first you are going to need boxes. If you are like me, Amazon provides you with a steady stream of these on your doorstep (or I have also used these gift boxes). If not, any cardboard box will do. You can also send a note home asking parents to send boxes in the week before. In my experience, families are always happy to contribute from their recycling pile :).
I let the kids go wild here and decorate their traps however they want with markers, stickers, or any other supplies they want to use.
Once they are decorated, I set up a sorting tray with shamrocks, rainbows (mini erasers), sticks (popsicle sticks), and plastic gold coins. You can see my Instagram reel of my set-up.
I found my supplies at the Dollar Tree and Amazon, and I have linked everything you need on my storefront here.
Preparing the Trap
Next, we used the counting cards from the St. Patrick’s Day Week curriculum to get the traps ready!
Little learners took turns drawing a card and counting the right amount of objects to put into their traps. I loved listening to their little voices as they practiced their number skills in this activity.
Not all of my little friends wanted to use the counting cards as their guide for their leprechaun traps, and that’s ok too! One little guy thought it was a much better idea to put a cauldron and lots of gold coins on top so they would fall on the leprechaun.
That sparked all of the kids to think out of the box (no pun intended). The next thing I knew they were shoving a stuffed animal into the box pretending he was the leprechaun.
It was so much fun watching their little minds think of different ways they could trap a leprechaun. If you have older preschoolers, you could extend the activity by having them draw a picture of their leprechaun trap plan like the kids at the end of the book did.
All of the printables for the leprechaun trap setup are included in my St. Patrick’s Day weekly curriculum in my shop. Each weekly plan includes five days' worth of book recommendations, activities, and more!
If you are looking for more fun St. Patrick’s Day books to read with your kids, I have all of my favorites in an Amazon list here.
If you make a leprechaun trap with your preschoolers, please share it with me over on Instagram. I would love to see!
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